Cake Chronicles pt 2

Continuing the series on the giant cake project I am attempting, I am proud to announce that (some of) the cakes are baked!  Following my cardinal rule of large cake projects, I plan and prepare as far in advance as possible. I like to bake the cakes themselves 2-3 weeks before the "big day" so that when the event day comes, stress levels are minimal, and if anything goes wrong, there is plenty of time to make it right!

Last weekend (two weeks before both baby showers) I baked both baby shower cakes. One cake is a two-tiered, round chocolate cake using my favorite chocolate cake recipe of all time, from the best cake book in the world, Sky High. I made two layers per tier: one tier is 12" round, and the other is 8" round.  The Sky High cake book provides recipes for triple layer cakes, 6, 8, and 10" square. I used a single recipe (the 10" square version) and it made the perfect amount of batter for one 12" round and one 8" round, which I baked at the same time.  If you're keeping score at home, this means I made two batches of batter, and did two rounds of baking, to get all four layers. According to this sizing guide, this should be enough cake for ~80 people. Although as I type this, I'm kind of worried that I won't have enough cake... we'll see.

The other cake is a sheet cake. I made one layer chocolate, using the same 10" square recipe which was plenty for a sheet cake - yay! I also made one layer of buttermilk vanilla, which comes from the same cookbook, although here's a smaller version of it already on the web. I baked the 12" round recipe which was enough for the sheet cake, but the batter was too much for my 7 qt mixer!! I had to dump it into a giant bowl and mix in 14 eggs by hand.....yeah that's an experience I don't want to repeat.

So to recap, I made three large batches of chocolate cake batter, and one large batch of vanilla cake batter.  Four rounds of pans in the oven later, all of the cakes were baked!  I wrapped them in triple layers of plastic wrap, put them on cake boards, and put them nicely into the freezer, where they will wait for May 17th!

I didn't take any pictures of the actual cake process (oops), but here are some before/after pictures:

Shopping for cake pans at the restaurant supply store in Oakland

Post-visit to Costco: giant bags of flour, sugar, powdered sugar, eggs, butter, cinnamon, vanilla, buttermilk and cocoa powder

Cakes wrapped and stacked in the freezer

Read the rest of the Cake Chronicles Series:
(1) Cake Chronicles
(2) Cake Chronicles pt 2 (you're here!)
(3) Cake Chronicles - Intermission
(4) Cake Chronicles pt 3
(5) Cake Chronicles pt 4
(6) Cake Chronicles pt 5

Cake Chronicles

I am about to embark on a few very large cake projects, and I want to document this process so I can look back one day and remember how absolutely crazy I was :)  In the span of a month, I have offered to make cakes for three very important events. Here's the rundown:

• May 18: baby shower for one of my best friends. There will be 80-100 people at the baby shower (can you tell how loved that baby will be?) and the cake will be chocolate with the possibility of fondant (cowboy theme). I have never made or worked with fondant. Photo inspiration: http://goo.gl/AKMhE
• May 19: baby shower for another dear friend. There will be 40-50 people at this shower. It will be a dinosaur cake. I have no idea what that means yet, but I'll have to figure that out within the next two weeks! Also the cake will be a yellow cake, with buttercream frosting. Photo inspiration: http://goo.gl/kq4ht
• June 8: my best friend's wedding. There will be 300 people at the wedding. This requires a lot of cake. I plan to make one big "show" cake (three tiers, chocolate cake, pink buttercream frosting), and two sheet cakes to keep in the kitchen (one carrot cake, and one vanilla cake with strawberry lemon buttercream). Photo inspiration: http://goo.gl/p55xZ

The location of each event is also important. The baby shower on the 18th is in Fresno, the baby shower on the 19th is in Oakland, and the wedding on June 8 is in Clovis. Aside from the Oakland shower, the travel time to Fresno/Clovis is 3 hours, which means I'll need to transport the cakes long distance.  Here's the game plan:

• Bake the baby shower cakes in advance and freeze
• On Friday May 17th, decorate both cakes
• On Saturday May 18th, drive to Clovis with the big cake, leave the other cake in the fridge in Oakland.
• Weekend of June 1, bake the wedding cakes
• On Friday June 7, drive all the wedding cakes to Clovis.

Next up - baking the cakes!

Read the rest of the Cake Chronicles Series:
(1) Cake Chronicles (you're here!)
(2) Cake Chronicles pt 2
(3) Cake Chronicles - Intermission
(4) Cake Chronicles pt 3
(5) Cake Chronicles pt 4
(6) Cake Chronicles pt 5

Xocolate Bar!

Oh hi there. It looks like it's been almost exactly 1 year since my last post... oops? I didn't mean to abandon my little corner of the internet, so let's pretend that I just hibernated for an exceedingly long winter and now I'm back :)  I actually didn't come here with a recipe for you (yet), but instead to tell you about an awesome time I had tonight taking a chocolate-making class!

My mom and I got LivingSocial vouchers to go to a chocolate-making class taught by Clive at The Xocolate Bar, in Albany, and oh man it was DELICIOUS! We learned how to temper chocolate, make fillings, use molds, and really work a bench scraper. I really wanted to post about it tonight because otherwise I'll forget all about it, and I don't want to forget about this deliciousness!

Tempering machine... so neat!

Above is the tempering machine. You put a bunch of chocolate in it, and it heats it up to about 120 degrees, and then you add some "seed" chocolate (or just more chocolate pieces) and it lowers the temperature to a controlled 87-90 degrees. Then it's tempered! Home chefs would do this using a double boiler (bain marie) and a candy thermometer, but it requires a lot more effort.

Mmm ganache fillings!

We made several types of fillings: a salted chili (which was surprisingly delicious!!), a coffee cream, and a whiskey filling. The fillings are pictured above, and oooh it was hard not to just eat it straight from the bowl! But patience...we have bonbons to make!

Filling the molds

We first took melted dark chocolate (about 68 percent) and poured it into the poly-carbonate bonbon molds. These molds are serious business... they are like badass ice cube trays (because you can fill them with chocolate and whiskey ) Then we let the molds sit for about 15 minutes until the chocolate hardened around the edges, but was still liquid in the middle. Then you dump out the middle, so that the chocolate is only on the edges, like so:

Chocolate cups - almost ready to be filled!

 Once the middle is dumped out, it's time to scrape off the excess from the mold, to have a nice clean surface. To do that, you take a bench scraper and give it a good scrape!

All scraped clean!

Mom shows off her excellent bench scraping skills

Now we're ready to fill the bonbons! Put your filling in a pastry bag, and pipe away! Into the bonbon shells...not your mouth! (I had to remind myself of this)

Piping in some whiskey ganache

While we waited for the ganache to set in the fridge... we made THESE! Well, the caramels were pre-made by our teacher earlier in the day, but we got to dip them in chocolate!

Caramels ready to be dipped!

 We just dropped the caramels into the tempered chocolate, shook 'em off, and put them on a foil-lined cookie sheet.

Chocolate coated caramel...mmmmm

 After we put them on the cookie sheet, we sprinkled a generous pinch of good sea salt on top. Some of the caramels got fancy and had a cocoa butter transfer put on top. Those are pretty!

Caramels. Salted + Dressed up!

 After the chocolate filling had time to set in the fridge, it was time to take the bonbons out of their trays! We gave them a good smack onto some cutting boards, and bam! Delicious bonbons appeared!

Bonbons banged out of their molds!

 Here's a close up of the salted chili bonbons. These were GOOD!

Salted Chili bonbons

 And here is the smorgasbord of bonbons we made. I will try to name them all (clockwise from top left): Hazelnut (gianduja), milk and honey (these were shaped like boobies!), coffee cream, tamarind (these were shaped like buddha!), Aztec chili, salted chili, whiskey, and orange cream. Not pictured: coconut flake, and bali vanilla.  Yes, we made a LOT of bonbons!!

Bonbon smorgasbord!

 Here are the coconut bonbons.

Coconut bonbons

 At the end, we dusted some of the bonbons with lustre dust, to make them fancy :) Here, the Aztec chili got a bit of shiny pink!

Aztec Chili bonbons

 And here, the tamarind buddhas get a dusting of gold!

Tamarind Buddha bonbons

The class was so much fun! My only regret is that Clive (the chocolatier) gave us a very tiny box to fill up with chocolate to take home. So I ate as many as possible while we were there, and filled my box to capacity (luckily I had a rubber band to keep it closed!). Next time, I'm bringing tupperware ;)  My favorite chocolates were the salted chili, and the chocolate-covered caramels. I totally recommend the class!